Woman loses RM418,400 to online “lover”
Meeting people online isn’t a new thing, with some of us even finding love or friendship through dating apps. But there are unsavoury characters online who are looking to scam unsuspecting victims, as this woman in Kuantan learnt, when she met a man through a dating app. While the guy seemed to be a great catch who lives in France, she found out later that he had trapped her into a love scam after she transferred a whopping RM418,400 from her mum’s bank account to him.
They met on dating app, Cintaku
The story was reported by Bernama on 4th March 2021. According to the report, the unnamed 28-year-old woman met her online lover – a Malay man supposedly living and working as a businessman in France – through Cintaku, an online dating app for Muslims.
Image (for illustration purposes only) credit: Unsplash / Anastasia Sklyar
After a series of online interactions, both on the app and Whatsapp, he promised to give her a hefty RM89,700 cash gift as a declaration of his love. Reportedly, he even sent her photographic evidence of a cheque he would be sending her.
To make matters seem even more legit, she even received an email about the bank transfer of the cash gift, indicating that it was made through “foreign remittance”.
Declaration of love turns into requests for money in love scam
However, before the bank transfer was cleared, the woman was notified through email that she had to make a payment of RM2,000 – which she did. She soon began receiving more requests for money from the man that he said he needed to get the money which he was supposedly gifting her over.
In the end, she transferred a whopping amount totalling RM418,400 over 44 transactions to him, but still hadn’t received the cash gift. Finally, she realised that the relationship was a scam and reported the incident to the police before things could go further out of hand.
The woman, who is currently unemployed, is said to have transferred the money from her mum’s account, which she helps manage. Her mother is reported to be a teacher and is suffering from diabetes.
The woman met her online match through Cintaku, a dating app
Image credit: Cintaku
Woman unfortunate victim of love scam of over RM400k
Toying around with someone’s feelings is bad enough as it is – adding a scam to the ploy is deplorable. So Malaysians are advised to be vigilant whenever they are online, whether on social media or on dating apps, as more scams are cropping up around us with victims having to pay high prices for them – as this woman in Kuantan did. We hope that the police involved in the case will find a lead to help them solve this love scam soon.
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Cover image (for illustration purposes only) adapted from: Unsplash / Chad Madden and Unsplash / Timeo Buehrer